Blast zone

The Sox, who flew to Baltimore after the game for a four-game set against the Orioles that begins tonight, had their American League East lead over the Yankees trimmed to six games, with both teams having 22 games left. The Yankees are off today before opening a three-game series in Kansas City.

There isn't a team in baseball playing worse than the Orioles, who are 3-14 in their last 17 games, have been outscored, 154-74, in that span, and last Saturday were no-hit by Sox rookie Clay Buchholz in his second big league start.

But that was of little comfort last night to Okajima, who hit Gregg Zaun with a pitch to open the ninth and, after a sacrifice bunt, was taken over the center-field wall by Wells, who made the Sox pay for their failure to build a bigger lead than the 4-3 advantage Jason Varitek gave them with a two-run home run in the sixth.

Okajima ended July with an 0.87 ERA, and was having songs written about him. In 14 games since, he has allowed eight runs in 13 2/3 innings, an ERA of 5.27. Eric Gagné, imported to ease the load on Okajima and Jonathan Papelbon, said he plans to throw a bullpen session today. "I feel bad we're down a man," Gagné said.

It was preposterous, of course, to presume that Okajima would remain unhittable from April to October.

"We always said the second time around the league, people are going to make adjustments, and they have," said Alex Cora, who made two big defensive plays early but failed to get down a bunt in the fifth, when the Sox had two on and no out, lined into a double play before that, and grounded into a force play with the potential go-ahead run on board in the eighth.

"[Okajima] is not going to be as dominant as he was in the first half, but he's still done a good job for us. Vernon has been struggling the whole season, but he can still do damage, and when you leave a pitch up in the zone, you know what he can do."